The Winner
by Literary Noir
Summary: The aftermath of the film noir, Sweet Smell of Success. Follow unscrupulous press agent, Sidney Falco, as he claws his way out of a smear campaign that has ruined his career. As both his loyal secretary Gloria and old flame Rita try to get him to let bygones be bygones, Sidney turns amateur gumshoe to find something, anything to smear the man that smeared him- J.J. Hunsecker.


The Winner

Chapter One: Two Weeks

There is nothing surer to make a man rethink his place in the world than a good beating. Right now, though, Sidney Falco could think of little but the cold pavement pressed against his cheek and the shattered ribs grazing across his tendered lung. He lay stiff on his stomach, one arm tucked awkwardly beneath his chest, and oh, how he wheezed!

"Mister!" a nasally contralto echoed down the alleyway.

Sidney began to open his bruised lips to reply but suddenly felt the fresh taste of pennies drool into the back of his throat. Taken with a fit of coughs, he shivered into a fetal position and pulled his camel overcoat into himself until he was buried beneath it.

"Hey, Mister," a teenage boy peaked over Sidney curiously. Against the neon backdrop of Time Square, the boy appeared little more than a bespectacled silhouette with a boy scout's slicked back hair. Wearily lifting his head, Sidney saw in his sidelong glance the vision of a familiar face, and like a cat arched from fear, he clambered away from the boy with a speed not thought possible in his state.

Charily, the boy crouched down out of the light and lifted two open hands in a sign of peace as Sidney backed up against the brick wall. With his vision coming into focus, Sidney saw the teenager's pimpled face and sighed with relief. It was only a vision, nothing more.

"Gee, Mister, you look done in!"

Sidney wiped the blood from his face with his coat sleeve, spitting on the ground.

The boy stood up and started to walk away, "I'll call the cops—"

Sidney wafted his hand at that, grabbing toward the boy's pant leg and clinging to what little cloth he caught in time. Yet that was enough—the last straw, and so Sidney fell limp against the stone again on the edge of falling into another black sleep.

He mouthed a few last syllables before it took him.

The boy knelt low, with his ear near the pavement.

"A-a-ambulance," Sidney said and then fainted.

—――

Diagnosis?

A broken arm, a broken leg, a few cracked ribs, a black eye, and a busted lip.

At first glance, a couple of casts did not sound so terrible but soon after, the doctor insisted on surgery to ensure proper alignment of the leg while it healed. The leg got the worst of it, it seems. There was speculation about a permanent limp for a little while but they soon let off, as Sidney had a tendency to drift off when the doctoral monologues grew longer and more dramatic. In fact, he drifted off after about two seconds of any conversation, preferring to spend long hours slumbering during the day with a few bouts of uneasy sleeplessness in the night that quickly overflowed the ashtrays. It only grew worse after the doctor officially forbid the nurses from bringing him the newspaper, particularly _The New York Globe_.

"You'll heal faster if you are in a restful environment," is the line he pulled. Mostly, though, Sidney suspected that the doctor grew irritated at the sheer number of coffee mugs shattered against the far end wall in record time. Sidney could hardly help it, though, not with the trash that was being peddled. It was official: Sidney Falco had been outed as a black sheep by the media. One by one, all his greatest leads, direct and indirect, were being cast into doubt.

 _RUTHLESS PRESS AGENT FRAMES ALL-AMERICAN JAZZ GUITARIST!_

 _MUSICIAN DALLAS SPEAKS OUT: SIDNEY FALCO LIED!_

 _PRESS AGENT TIED TO STRING OF PHONY "DRUG BUSTS"_

 _NEW YORK GLOBE APOLOGIZES, CUTS TIES WITH FALCO, LLC._

Sidney worried he would go prematurely bald with the amount of time spent clawing at his very hair from rage. If after three days, they had already blamed him for every major drug bust of a musician in the past year, he dreaded what else was out there. After a week, he began to rebel, calling in his dutiful secretary to smuggle him coffee, cigarettes, bagels, and most importantly _The New York Globe_. It was officially week two, and the only thing keeping him from dragging his way out of bed was how keen everybody else was to see him well healed, out of the hospital, and ripe for the slaughter.

A smooth jazz riff sidled into the airy room as lithe long-nailed fingers turned the knob of the radio. The window was open and the smoke drifted in curvy lilts with the passing of the breezes. Her claret lips sucked on the filter, then came that gentle _puff_ as she pulled away the cigarette and the smoke passed through her teeth.

When the door to the hospital room opened, she rested her hand down protectively on the end of the bed and gave a concerned purse of her brows.

"Hello?" she said, and with that sultry sound, Sidney perked up, slowly wagging his head as he opened his eyes. Yet when he looked down toward the end of the bed, there was nothing but the slight protrusion of his two feet from under the covers. The radio was off, the ash tray filled with stale butts, and the elderly nurse stood near the door, flitting through paperwork.

"Always a pleasure to wake to a beautiful face!" Sidney crooned with a baby face smile, stretching ear to ear. The nurse raised a brow with a decided _hmph_ snorting through her nose. With a glance at the window, Sidney realized he had slept the day away.

"Your pal Gloria came by again today," the nurse said pointing her clipboard at a new vase of flowers resting at the bedside, next to the daily cup of coffee and bagel atop a neatly folded newspaper. The nurse wandered over to the table and snatched up the newspaper with a disapproving glare.

Wriggling up the mattress, Sidney began to smile with amusement but suppressed a sneer in the corner of his mouth as his movement jerked his right arm and left leg, both held tight in casts. With grace, though, he sprawled his left arm behind his head and glibly slouched back on his pillow.

"Cute kid," he smirked.

The nurse returned with a scathing smirk of her own, "It's awful strange that no matter what time of day she comes to visit, she always finds you fast asleep these past few days."

Sidney leaned his head back, snuggling it into the crook of his arm and staring dazedly at the ceiling tiles. Then, as a breeze moved through the room, he swore he could smell a faint perfume. He looked up, straight into the nurse's eyes.

"Was anyone else here today?"

"Well, there was Gloria…" the nurse frowned a little in thought, "Frank D'Angelo called again, asked specifically for me to relay a message: 'Sidney,' he says, 'Get off your lazy— _bum_ and call me back.'"

"'s that it?"

The nurse nodded.

"Can you bring a phone in here?"

As the nurse laid down the phone on the side table, she moved the flowers more prominently in front of Sidney, tossing a judgmental glance in his direction. He rolled his eyes, wafting her aside as he laid the phone on his shoulder and began to twirl the dial.

"Let me know if you need anything else, Mr. Falco," she said crossly and left the room as he wafted her away. As he listened to the ringing, he lit a cigarette and waited.

"Hello, Frank?" he said, "It's Sidney!"

"Sidney you lazy bastard how are you how's the leg!" Frank rolled out all in one breath.

"The leg's fine—" Sidney blew out a smoke ring, "Swell, actually. I can hardly feel a thing."

"That's good to hear, so good it makes me wonder why you're still in there," Frank paused, "Two weeks, Sidney. I've been keeping the rabid dogs at bay for two weeks now, and I don't know how much longer I can keep 'em."

Nervously tapping away at the end of his cigarette, Sidney seethed in his frustration and spoke in a sickening saccharine, "Well, Frankie, I appreciate it."

"Really? I don't think you do. I've been calling you every day, twice a day and haven't got a dime back from you."

"So I've heard," Sidney grumbled, sucking in a deep drag from his cigarette.

"Ah, so you knew about it?"

Sidney rested the phone against his chest for a moment with pleading eyes toward the heavens. He brought the phone back to his ear, "Frankie, what do you want me to do? I didn't ask you to do anything for me."

"No, you just pressed the self-destruct button and thought you could sit back and watch as all your friends braced the blow for you! I've got at least ten of your old customers a day coming into my club asking questions—questions like, where the hell is Sidney Falco? And I want my money back!"

"Well, to be fair, Uncle Frank, that second one isn't exactly a question."

There was a sudden silence on the other end of the phone. Sidney could only hear the distant thrumming of a bass and the chatter of customers in his uncle's jazz club. Then his uncle cleared his throat and bellowed out in full.

" _Get out of that hospital, Sidney! Or so help me I'll come over there, drag you out by the collar, and throw you to the lot of 'em, d'ya hear?_ "

Sidney cringed, pulling the phone away from his eardrums.

"Well aren't you a peach…" he muttered.

"Sidney, I ain't kiddin' around! I've got the coppers at my door and about two dozen subpoenas for slander and libel against one Falco L-L-C, said Falco L-L-C that a certain someone got me to put a stake in last year."

Sidney butt in, "The doctors said I could go in maybe two to three days."

" _Now_ , Sidney!"

With a sigh, Sidney conceded, "I'll see what I can do."

" _Now,_ " and with that Frank hung up.

Sidney tapped at the end of his cigarette, only to realize that it had been hardly a minute and he had already smoked it to the butt. He began to twirl it between his forefingers when his eyes drifted over to the flowers on the table. He brought his hand hesitantly toward the phone as the flowers loomed in his vision but as he turned to discard his cigarette butt into the ashtray he noticed another one, half-finished with bright claret lipstick on the end.

Gloria did not smoke, and the nurse emptied out the tray every morning. Sidney pursed his lip in thought at that lipstick. Then the faint hint of perfume passed through his memory again as a breeze rustled the wispy window curtains, which glowed from the neon lights of midnight Manhattan.

As quick as the wind came and went, Sidney glanced back to the phone and dialed another number.

"Gloria?" he said, "It's Sidney."


End file.
